Page 77 of Serenade Me

“But he does. Blame himself.” Marius muses. He understands. Of course, he does. He knows Jez probably as well as I do. In some ways probably even more.

“Yes. But he shouldn’t. He saved me. I mean, he literally saved me. Rescued me. Broke his hand doing it, too.” I grimace at the memory of taking him to the hospital, his knuckles bleeding, his hand swollen like a grapefruit. His hand, his livelihood. And him just smiling at me, like it was nothing. Like he would do it again for me, a hundred times.

“Oh my god. When he broke his hand about a year ago when he disappeared for a week, that was… that was with you?”

I nod. I don’t know how much they know about me, or what he told them about that.

“We gave him so much shit about that. We had to postpone a tour for two months.”

“I know. I felt terrible.”

Marius starts pacing in front of me, his head shaking wildly, the memories coming back to him, finally making sense. “He was a mess. We all thought he’d been sleeping with someone’s wife and their husband had come home at the wrong time!”

“Ha. No. He broke it being my hero.” I shrug. There’s no other way to describe it.

“Yeah. That he is,” Marius sighs. “Why are you telling me all this?”

“Because I thought you needed to know.”

“About you, or about Jez?”

“About us both. And why we are the way we are.”

“And why we… you and me, can’t be the way we want to be?”

“No.”

“No?”

“No, just the opposite. After Jez got me away from the Maestro, it took me a long time to get better. I barely recovered enough to pass my senior year, but I did, because I just wanted to be done and start living my life. And when Jez offered the chance to come play with you guys, I didn’t know if I was going to be able to do it.”

“But you did. And you’re killing it. You did it!”

I shake my head. “No.”

“No?”

“No. I’m doing it – because of you. And only you.”

“Me?”

“You helped me. That first night. And then you kept helping. You literally taught me how to breathe again. And now I can play. I can finally do what I’ve wanted to do my whole life. Except there’s one small change. Now I want to play for you. With you. You’re the reason, Marius.”

“Anca.”

“So – as much as I owe Jez for saving my life. I owe you for giving it meaning again. For giving me the power to take my own destiny into my own hands again. I don’t want to lose that, Marius. And I don’t want to lose you.”

He comes over and pulls me against him. And I’m home. “What do we do about Jez?”

“I don’t know.” I really don’t. “But we will figure it out. Together.”

“Together.”

I lean my head on his chest, and the thump thump that meets me spells out everything I’m feeling about him too.

***

“You’re late.” Jez scowls at me as he sees us walking into the band’s suite at the hotel together.